PS. Moderators: Happy Eid to You all. I thought a long time before I decided upon this segment of the Forum in which to post my "Peace on Earth and Good Will to All" message.

Personally, I consider Current Events" the right place. In Spanish there is a difference between the verbs Ser and Estar. Estar means "right now", whereas Ser is "Always": i.e. I think this is message for always perhaps more than "right now": i.e. it is "current". I like to believe that my message is "Para Siempre", that is "for always" so move me if you wish. It is just in the message of "Christmas" this is mine.

Reality check Cassie: my constant Libran search for equilibrium between
my soft inside and my hardened protective outerlayer had me reeling
while reading your Christmas message. I don't want to rain on your
parade, the cynic in me has become a definite Scrooge.

I just want you and others who turn to these thoughts and wishes, in
today's complex world, to think hard how the Black Water operative,
sitting in his bunker, his 20 or so years of war hardened memories
garnered in Somalia/Congo/the jungles of Colombia, considers them...
watch the cynicism and utter hypocricy of the government representatives
shaking hands with their enemies, wonder why, in a supposed 2000 years
of history of Christianity the message of Jesus simply has reached a glass
ceiling, permeating only the 'lower crust' and never breaking through to
the 'upper crust' at least, never in any way more meaningful than on a
personal level.

I'm trying to point out that our desires to change the world are not new,
they are as eternal as your Peace and Goodwill to All message, and this
fact, its longevity and failure to materialise, makes me think there is
something wrong about our thinking, our expectations and our strategy.
Others, reaching my level of cynicism and hopelessness may reach for
the guerrilla warfare guidebook or strap an explosive device to
themselves and walk off with a different 'message', I tell you, I can fully
understand them. But I haven't reached that extreme. Instead, I have
been observing with a different 'angle', I ask myself, how come, in all the
years of outcry, all the years of promises and pledges, we still live with
the gaping wound that is Palestine in our midst? Why, despite
overwhelming opposition are we now into year 5 of the Iraqi occupation?
why, after the dot com bubble burst, after the housing collapse, after the
Enron scandal, are the people of Africa still third class citizens in their
own country? people say 'there's not the political will', but it seems to me
it is precisely the political will which is preventing the solutions from
flowering.

I have come to the conclusion that 'They' are not st**id, that 'They' have
hundreds of advisers and thinkers sitting in their 'think tanks' who must
SURELY have had the same thought as me, or you, or anybody else, a
thought which touched on a solution, and so I wonder Why has this or
that not been done already? And this thought leads me to conclude that if
They are NOT as st**id as we are convinced, then something much worse
is happening: things are going just fine, thank you very much.

Please watch Naomi Wolf on YouTube, for an inkling of what The Powers
That Be are capable of.

That you or I, Angela, Whisper, SignReader Herjihad or any number of
anonymous people all around the world, regardless of culture, wish for
Peace and stability and the realisation of our ideals is perfectly normal,
and 'They' are happy for us to go on donating to the NGO's or forming
new ones, 'They' are happy for donations for rebuilding Gaza to come
flooding in, our generosity is boundless, just as theirs is constrained by
'Office'. There is an invisible demarcation line between 'Them' and the
rest of us, and unless and until that line is breached, all of the beautiful
children in the world shall grow up repeating our every step, and gaining
no more ground than we have since your beloved Ghandi placed a bare
foot on the dusty earth.

Duende: You missed my point. Anyway, what would you have us all do? Lay down and die....?

Sorry to quote myself but this is what I said:

We truly are ALL connected! I believe this with all of my heart.

Laugh at me: I don't care. I will never turn my back on my dreams for Humanity because what we share is far, far greater than what divides us, and we MUST overcome the compulsion to fall into the trap of Econotheism: if anything were the message of corruption, this surely must be it.

I also said it was a human evolutionary necessity. We are adolescents! We have no idea what the future of humankind maybe other than our dreams for it. Neither you nor I know how the present will affect the far distant future anymore than the dinosaurs did. Even from a so called Neo Pagan perspective, I have more respect for God than to claim that this is the way it will always be...

I was actually, tonight, looking for this quote: I always thought it was Chesterton, turns out, not...

"Let everyone sweep in front of his own door and the whole world will be clean"

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe.

Then I found this one:

St. Francis of Assisi

Lord, Make me an instrument of your peace;Where there is hatred let me sow love;Where there is injury pardon;Where there is doubt faith;Where there is despair hope;Where there is darkness light;Where there is sadness joy.

O Divine Master,Grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console,To be understood as to understand,To be loved as to love,For it is in giving that we receive,It is in pardoning, that we are pardoned,It is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Where there is charity and wisdom, there is neither fear nor ignorance. Where there is patience and humility, there is neither anger nor vexation. Where there is poverty and joy, there is neither greed nor avarice. Where there is peace and meditation, there is neither anxiety nor doubt.

Lovely: Me and Frankie - both needing a "Reality Check". Oh well, the company is good.

Bush and his top officials waged a campaign of misinformation about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

President George W. Bush and seven of his administration's top
officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security
Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made
at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11,
2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein's
Iraq. Nearly five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an exhaustive
examination of the record shows that the statements were part of an
orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and,
in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.

On
at least 532 separate occasions (in speeches, briefings, interviews,
testimony, and the like), Bush and these three key officials, along
with Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul
Wolfowitz, and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott
McClellan, stated unequivocally that Iraq had weapons of mass
destruction (or was trying to produce or obtain them), links to Al
Qaeda, or both. This concerted effort was the underpinning of the Bush
administration's case for war.

It is now beyond dispute that Iraq didnot
possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to Al
Qaeda. This was the conclusion of numerous bipartisan government
investigations, including those by the Senate Select Committee on
Intelligence (2004 and 2006), the 9/11 Commission, and the
multinational Iraq Survey Group, whose "Duelfer Report" established
that Saddam Hussein had terminated Iraq's nuclear program in 1991 and
made little effort to restart it.

In short, the Bush
administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous
information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in
military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003. Not surprisingly, the
officials with the most opportunities to make speeches, grant media
interviews, and otherwise frame the public debate also made the most
false statements, according to this first-ever analysis of the entire
body of prewar rhetoric.

President Bush, for example, made 232
false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and another
28 false statements about Iraq's links to Al Qaeda. Secretary of State
Powell had the second-highest total in the two-year period, with 244
false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 10 about
Iraq's links to Al Qaeda. Rumsfeld and Fleischer each made 109 false
statements, followed by Wolfowitz (with 85), Rice (with 56), Cheney
(with 48), and McClellan (with 14).

The massive database at the
heart of this project juxtaposes what President Bush and these seven
top officials were saying for public consumption against what was
known, or should have been known, on a day-to-day basis. This fully
searchable database includes the public statements, drawn from both
primary sources (such as official transcripts) and secondary sources
(chiefly major news organizations) over the two years beginning on
September 11, 2001. It also interlaces relevant information from more
than 25 government reports, books, articles, speeches, and interviews.

Consider, for example, these false public statements made in the run-up to war:

On
August 26, 2002, in an address to the national convention of the
Veteran of Foreign Wars, Cheney flatly declared: "Simply stated, there
is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.
There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends,
against our allies, and against us." In fact, former CIA Director
George Tenet later recalled, Cheney's assertions went well beyond his
agency's assessments at the time. Another CIA official, referring to
the same speech, told journalist Ron Suskind, "Our reaction was, 'Where
is he getting this stuff from?' "

In the closing days of
September 2002, with a congressional vote fast approaching on
authorizing the use of military force in Iraq, Bush told the nation in
his weekly radio address: "The Iraqi regime possesses biological and
chemical weapons, is rebuilding the facilities to make more and,
according to the British government, could launch a biological or
chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the order is given. .
. . This regime is seeking a nuclear bomb, and with fissile material
could build one within a year." A few days later, similar findings were
also included in a much-hurried National Intelligence Estimate on
Iraq's weapons of mass destruction -- an analysis that hadn't been done
in years, as the intelligence community had deemed it unnecessary and
the White House hadn't requested it.

In July 2002, Rumsfeld
had a one-word answer for reporters who asked whether Iraq had
relationships with Al Qaeda terrorists: "Sure." In fact, an assessment
issued that same month by the Defense Intelligence Agency (and
confirmed weeks later by CIA Director Tenet) found an absence of
"compelling evidence demonstrating direct cooperation between the
government of Iraq and Al Qaeda." What's more, an earlier DIA
assessment said that "the nature of the regime's relationship with Al
Qaeda is unclear."

On May 29, 2003, in an interview with Polish
TV, President Bush declared: "We found the weapons of mass destruction.
We found biological laboratories." But as journalist Bob Woodward
reported in State of Denial, days earlier a team of civilian
experts dispatched to examine the two mobile labs found in Iraq had
concluded in a field report that the labs were not for biological
weapons. The team's final report, completed the following month,
concluded that the labs had probably been used to manufacture hydrogen
for weather balloons.

On January 28, 2003, in his annual State
of the Union address, Bush asserted: "The British government has
learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of
uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has
attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear
weapons production." Two weeks earlier, an analyst with the State
Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research sent an email to
colleagues in the intelligence community laying out why he believed the
uranium-purchase agreement "probably is a hoax."

On February
5, 2003, in an address to the United Nations Security Council, Powell
said: "What we're giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid
intelligence. I will cite some examples, and these are from human
sources." As it turned out, however, two of the main human sources to
which Powell referred had provided false information. One was an Iraqi
con artist, code-named "Curveball," whom American intelligence
officials were dubious about and in fact had never even spoken to. The
other was an Al Qaeda detainee, Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi, who had
reportedly been sent to Eqypt by the CIA and tortured and who later
recanted the information he had provided. Libi told the CIA in January
2004 that he had "decided he would fabricate any information
interrogators wanted in order to gain better treatment and avoid being
handed over to [a foreign government]."

The false statements dramatically increased in August 2002, with
congressional consideration of a war resolution, then escalated through
the mid-term elections and spiked even higher from January 2003 to the
eve of the invasion.

It
was during those critical weeks in early 2003 that the president
delivered his State of the Union address and Powell delivered his
memorable U.N. presentation. For all 935 false statements, including
when and where they occurred, go to the search page for this project; the methodology used for this analysis is explained here.

In
addition to their patently false pronouncements, Bush and these seven
top officials also made hundreds of other statements in the two years
after 9/11 in which they implied that Iraq had weapons of mass
destruction or links to Al Qaeda. Other administration higher-ups,
joined by Pentagon officials and Republican leaders in Congress, also
routinely sounded false war alarms in the Washington echo chamber.

The
cumulative effect of these false statements -- amplified by thousands
of news stories and broadcasts -- was massive, with the media coverage
creating an almost impenetrable din for several critical months in the
run-up to war. Some journalists -- indeed, even some entire news
organizations -- have since acknowledged that their coverage during
those prewar months was far too deferential and uncritical. These mea
culpas notwithstanding, much of the wall-to-wall media coverage
provided additional, "independent" validation of the Bush
administration's false statements about Iraq.

The "ground truth"
of the Iraq war itself eventually forced the president to backpedal,
albeit grudgingly. In a 2004 appearance on NBC's Meet the Press,
for example, Bush acknowledged that no weapons of mass destruction had
been found in Iraq. And on December 18, 2005, with his approval ratings
on the decline, Bush told the nation in a Sunday-night address from the
Oval Office: "It is true that Saddam Hussein had a history of pursuing
and using weapons of mass destruction. It is true that he
systematically concealed those programs, and blocked the work of U.N.
weapons inspectors. It is true that many nations believed that Saddam
had weapons of mass destruction. But much of the intelligence turned
out to be wrong. As your president, I am responsible for the decision
to go into Iraq. Yet it was right to remove Saddam Hussein from power."

Bush
stopped short, however, of admitting error or poor judgment; instead,
his administration repeatedly attributed the stark disparity between
its prewar public statements and the actual "ground truth" regarding
the threat posed by Iraq to poor intelligence from a Who's Who of
domestic agencies.

On the other hand, a growing number of
critics, including a parade of former government officials, have
publicly -- and in some cases vociferously -- accused the president and
his inner circle of ignoring or distorting the available intelligence.
In the end, these critics say, it was the calculated drumbeat of false
information and public pronouncements that ultimately misled the
American people and this nation's allies on their way to war.

Bush
and the top officials of his administration have so far largely avoided
the harsh, sustained glare of formal scrutiny about their personal
responsibility for the litany of repeated, false statements in the
run-up to the war in Iraq. There has been no congressional
investigation, for example, into what exactly was going on inside the
Bush White House in that period. Congressional oversight has focused
almost entirely on the quality of the U.S. government's pre-war
intelligence -- not the judgment, public statements, or public
accountability of its highest officials. And, of course, only four of
the officials -- Powell, Rice, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz -- have
testified before Congress about Iraq.

Short of such review, this
project provides a heretofore unavailable framework for examining how
the U.S. war in Iraq came to pass. Clearly, it calls into question the
repeated assertions of Bush administration officials that they were the
unwitting victims of bad intelligence.

Above all, the 935 false
statements painstakingly presented here finally help to answer two
all-too-familiar questions as they apply to Bush and his top advisers:
What did they know, and when did they know it?

everybody that the one of Iraq, is a false one of lies, and was the invasion by I refuel and control of the zone, everybody that all the controls and intelligence norteamerican has falseado all documents and tests. and that the killer May and terrorist of the world is the america United States. the unica form to be able to gain these terrorists of the world, is to be united people and to fight, and paises arabes tendran that to rise against their corrupt gobenantes, already is hour to fight but, that this does not walk forwards, for that reason we are enslaved of the United States the world, of the greater assassin and terrorist of history, bloodthirsty and thieves.

Angela's plan sounds good. I hope it catches on. But, really. It depends on a modicum of good will that is nowhere present on the present political scene. Do you trust the World Bank to administer anything? (Read "Globalization and Its Discontents.") Besides, why on earth would the U.S. pull out? (Yeah, yeah. They pulled the "combat troops" out. They'll be right back as soon as the puppet there has a couple of strings break.) The U.S. Embassy complex there is the largest in the world. The country is positioning itself for the coming oil war and "popular sovereignty" be damned. Sorry.

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